The Caesar Clue (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “Two dumb bastards,” I said.

  “I couldn’t see you but I followed the way I knew you’d come. I didn’t know just how to handle it. I couldn’t exactly knock on the door. I went to the back and that’s when I saw him, by the pool.”

  It wasn’t hard to imagine the scene, because I’d been out there myself. Rivas had materialized from nowhere and Solly had fired instinctively.…

  “I thought I had it dicked,” he whispered. “When I quit Cox, I took out my old Colt. Never could hit anything with that damned nine millimeter, and even when you do, you don’t know if it’ll do anything to ’em. But the old Colt nineteen-eleven …”

  “You got him,” I said. “He didn’t live a second after you fired.”

  “Yeah. But what I can’t figure, Micah, is how he hit me.”

  “He didn’t,” I said. “It was Cox’s man. He was the one who nailed you.” I knew it would please him. “But I got him.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Solly muttered. “I didn’t think it was Rivas.” He shifted slightly and I realized he was looking up at me in the darkness. “You know if I’d seen him, I’d of gotten him, too.”

  “He wouldn’t have had a prayer,” I agreed.

  For a minute I thought he had stopped breathing but then his hand moved out to grasp mine.

  “Cox and his people, they were looking for her,” he said. “They went crazy.”

  “After Jenny?” I asked.

  “No.” His voice came out in a painful rasp. “The other one. They were looking for her.”

  My head swam and I tried to keep my voice steady.

  “You mean she really is alive?”

  “Alive,” he confirmed. “Oh my God, all of them. Everywhere.”

  “Who, Solly? Who’s everywhere?”

  “Outside. The storm. Oh, Jesus, the swamp.”

  “What are you trying to say, Solly? Tell me, please? Is Julia Morvant alive? She can’t be in the swamp. Did you see her? Is she here? For God’s sake, tell me.…”

  But this time he was beyond talk. I felt his carotid and got no pulse.

  The water was to his waist now and I stood painfully and dragged him through the half-open doorway as best I could. The stairs: I had to get him onto the stairs. Maybe with mouth to mouth and chest compressions I could start him breathing again. He was tough. He’d been through other tough spots in Nam. A little piece of lead no bigger than a pencil eraser wasn’t going to kill him.

  The bottom floor of the house was dark, a watery cavern of sloshing waves.

  “Benedict! Elias!” I called out. “I need help.”

  The wind answered with a howl and something crashed down in the darkness beyond the stairway.

  “Benedict! Is there anybody there?”

  I was trying to keep his head above water, but the effort was getting to me. My instincts told me he was dead, but I couldn’t let him go. He had saved me and I wasn’t going to forget.

  A light flickered above me, to the right, and I made out the outline of the stairs.

  “Mr. Dunn, is that you?” It was the voice of Elias and a moment later I saw him coming toward me, flashlight in hand. Benedict followed a second later and soon they were lifting him together.

  “He’s stopped breathing,” I said. “We’ve got to get him started again.”

  Elias lifted him with surprising agility and deposited him at the top of the steps.

  “I have CPR,” Benedict said to my surprise and started giving mouth to mouth. I staggered to the top and collapsed.

  Elias looked from the prone Solly to me. “Old house won’t last forever,” he said. “Won’t do your friend no good if the house goes.”

  I lay back, exhausted, my head against the wooden balustrade.

  She was alive. That’s what Solly had said. All along she had been alive.…

  The floor gave way and I reached out to keep from falling.

  It was Elias’s hand shaking me awake.

  “Mr. Dunn, wake up. It’s your friend. He’s breathing again.”

  24

  It wasn’t much, just shallow respirations, but it was something. Benedict sat to one side, his face disbelieving.

  “I took the course,” he said unnecessarily. “I didn’t know I’d ever have to use it. And I think he started breathing again in time so there wasn’t any brain damage.”

  Elias held up a small transistor radio. “Thing ought to be passed out inside a couple of hours.”

  “Let’s get him into one of the bedrooms,” I said and watched as the two other men carried Solly across the hall to what I judged to be a guest room.

  I watched as they placed him onto the bed.

  “So far so good,” Benedict said, still shocked at his own success. He straightened up from the bed. “What about Cox?”

  “Dead,” I said. “You won’t have to worry about him anymore.”

  A slight ripple of relief passed over his features.

  “He was …”

  “Crazy,” I finished. “Yeah, I know. That’s why you called me, wasn’t it? You couldn’t feel comfortable with him.” I hesitated. “But there had to be something more. Did you know Rivas was here?”

  “Here?” His face went white. “No. How could I?”

  I started to pursue the matter, but I was tired, and my hand was cut, and with the wind threatening to tear the roof off the house, it seemed a waste of energy. Instead, I half nodded and lay back again, pastiches from the last days moving through my dreams. I was talking to the medical examiner and he was holding something up in a plastic bag, and when I looked closely I started laughing, because it was a monkey’s paw, not a human organ at all. I was sitting beside the lake listening to a stockbroker telling me to buy Transcaribbean Securities and he was showing me a portfolio with an airplane on the cover. I was in a white room and gowned surgeons were standing over me. The main doctor was speaking, telling me that he could help me, that the odds were ninety percent I’d have full use of my arm, and then I realized it was Laurent’s voice and I jerked awake.

  A milky light was filtering into the room through the cracks in the storm shutters at the end of the hallway. The house still stood. I heaved myself up and checked Solly. He continued to breathe. Elias stood at the head of the stairs, regarding the muddy waters that swirled ten feet below, but Benedict was nowhere to be seen.

  “A couple of hours,” I said, “and they ought to be out here to get us. Sounds like the wind’s died down.”

  Elias nodded grimly. “Couple hours,” he echoed. “I been with this family for thirty-five years, longer if you count I was brought up here. I seen the congressman when he was a little boy, and I remember when he married the missus. A beautiful couple they was.”

  “The house can be rebuilt,” I said.

  He looked up and our eyes met for a long time, and then he turned away.

  He went to the end of the hall, where a window looked out onto the grounds, and with a sudden effort of rage as much as strength, drove his fist through the glass of the window and into the closed shutters. The shutters sagged and he struck again, this time knocking one of the shutters off its hinges and letting in the daylight.

  “Might as well give them a chance to see us,” he said, turning back around to face me.

  A door opened behind me then and I turned to see Benedict carefully relocking Stokley’s room.

  “I was checking,” he said. “To see what of the congressman’s things could be salvaged.”

  “I think,” I said, “that a good place to start would be with the congressman.”

  His face blanched. “What do you mean?”

  Elias had turned back around to look out the window, unable to face what was coming.

  “Don’t you know?” I asked, taking a step forward.

  He backed up against the door, his eyes frightened.

  “What are you talking about? What…?”

  “You called me down here because you needed somebody to protect your boss and you didn’t tru
st Cox. You knew Rivas was here and you were scared.”

  “No!”

  “Get out the way,” I ordered.

  He didn’t move and I swept him aside.

  “You can’t—” he began but I pulled back my leg and kicked the door open.

  It flew inward and I followed, without giving him a chance to block me.

  Emerson Stokley was sitting on the bed, his face ashen.

  His eyes went from alarm to resignation. He tried to stand and then caught one of the bedposts for support. His head was wrapped in gauze and he wore a coffee-colored dressing gown and slippers.

  “Mr. Dunn …” he said. “I thought we might meet again.”

  “My God, Stokley,” I said and then wondered if he’d heard me. But the expression on his face told me he had.

  “Congressman, I tried to keep him out,” Benedict jabbered, flying to Stokley’s side. “I tried to tell him.…”

  The congressman nodded and Benedict fell silent.

  “What now, Mr. Dunn?” Stokley asked. “You wouldn’t be here if certain things hadn’t happened.”

  “Certain things,” I said, shaking my head. “Like Rivas being killed and me surviving. People are dead because of this.”

  “Mr. Dunn, I can’t hear everything you’re saying but I’m sure there’s a way we can handle this.”

  “Is there? Are you ready to tell the world about Julia Morvant? Do you know what I’m saying, Congressman? Or do I have to write it down?”

  “You can’t understand,” Stokley said hoarsely. “No matter how hard you try, you can’t.”

  “No? I can understand how you got involved with Julia and why she got close to you. I can understand about her sister and about how she managed to get the story to Julia before your lap dogs recaptured her. You’re the one who made the marks on Jenny’s body, didn’t you? What was it, a belt? Are those the kinds of games you like to play? Bondage and discipline? You’re a pretty face, Stokley, and everybody says you’ve even got a good brain. You could’ve gone all the way to the top. But you had a problem that would’ve stopped you sooner or later, didn’t you? You’re a real sicky.”

  Benedict stared at Stokley, searching for an order, a direction, but the other’s face was frozen.

  “It’s ironic. You could’ve had any woman you wanted but you had to choose one named Jenny. The mistake was that she had a sister and her sister was a pretty smart person, herself, not a street whore, but a high-class call girl with a flair for the dramatic. You did your thing with Jenny and when you were finished, you and Cox got her into a very exclusive clinic. Now Cox was an interesting case. He said he was working for the Justice Department. I think that was a lie. I think he worked for Defense. And he probably did have some legitimate commission, if these outfits are ever legitimate. But I think he saw himself as having another, more important function. You sit on a couple of committees that are important to the military. House Armed Services, for one. You can schedule bills for a hearing, have riders attached that favor certain projects. You’re a great favorite among certain admirals and generals. It would be a hell of a thing for them if you lost your seat in Congress. It would upset a lot of plans. So it’s in their interests to protect you. I’m not saying the Joint Chiefs sent Cox’s raiders down here to protect you. I just think Cox saw a niche for himself, a way to ingratiate himself with his bosses and with you by taking on a difficult problem, one he probably didn’t share with anyone above him. It’s been done before, hasn’t it? A loose cannon, that’s what he was, but with the quiet backing of the official establishment.”

  Stokley was trembling now and Benedict had shrunk back a couple of steps, as if he didn’t know whether to run or stay.

  “So Cox saw it as a case of damage control. Grab the girl and hide her away until somebody figured what to do with her. Maybe wipe out her memory and then let her go. Cox’s idea of an enlightened solution. But then Jenny escaped and got in touch with her sister.”

  I didn’t want to go on but there was no stopping now.

  “Julia called her father and tried to get his help, but he’s a stubborn old man. His daughters failed him and he wasn’t about to be moved. So next Julia tried to figure a way to get to Jenny. She tried the man who ran the clinic, Dr. Laurent. She went to him with some bogus mental problem and he prescribed a tranquilizer. She was feeling him out, trying to get an idea of where he might be vulnerable. Maybe she thought she could use her wiles on him. But it didn’t do her any good. Her sister was stuck in his clinic and there was no way out. After all, what could she do? Go to the law? Who’d believe a whore, trying to save another whore?”

  My mouth was dry. I was seeing her now in my mind, desperate, trying to maintain a facade.…

  “So she decided on the next best thing: She made herself available to the man who’d been responsible. I don’t know how she managed to get to you. But with your weakness it probably wasn’t hard. All she had to do was inveigle an invitation to some social function. She has a little book, you know. They all do. There are people in her book that she knew would help her. So she found some event where you’d be dedicating a school or giving a speech and made your acquaintance, and it didn’t take long for you to realize she had some of the same hang-ups you did. Or that’s what she let you think.”

  “I can’t understand what you’re saying,” Stokley said, shaking his head. “Anyway, you’d better wait until you have legal counsel. He’ll tell you to be very careful about what you say.”

  “I know. And then he’ll tell me nothing can be done as long as I can prove it’s the truth. And I can prove it, can’t I?”

  Stokley raised a hand, as if to push me away, but it was useless.

  I turned to the frightened aide. “You know it’s true, don’t you, Benedict?”

  His mouth moved but his eyes were on those of the older man.

  “So Julia became your new playmate,” I went on. “You thought she was a political groupie with odd tastes. She let you believe that. But once she realized there wasn’t any way to get to her sister, she hit on another plan. And it was very simple. And effective. She decided on revenge.”

  I didn’t know if he could hear or not but by now it didn’t matter.

  “You two played your games. My guess is she kept you pretty well at arm’s length—or should I say belt’s length?— with promises and then, when you invited her to meet you in the Caribbean, she figured it was a good chance to do what had to be done, where you wouldn’t have all the cards stacked in your favor. So she flew to you and I hope, for your sake, you had an idyllic little interlude. Because it was the most expensive of your life.”

  “Please, Mr. Dunn—” Stokley sat back down on the bed—”I’m tired. This has been a trial for me. Nelson, can you get on the roof, through the attic? Make some kind of signal, a flag? They’ll be coming. Any time now they’ll be coming—”

  “What’s wrong, Congressman? Your bomb wounds hurting now? Your deafness is better, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not like you really lost your hearing. You just have a lot of gauze to hear through. You can really hear my voice if you try, can’t you? It’s not like you’re really deaf—”

  “Stop!”

  Benedict turned away from me and Stokley’s eyes seemed to go dead.

  “All those pictures downstairs,” I said. “There must’ve been ten or twelve of them. Hell, you must be one of the most photographed men in America. I remember the campaign, last year. Shots of your wife and you on picnics. Probably taken right here, but they didn’t show the house. Just faces. Especially yours. And the one on the offshore platform, where you were talking to the workers about keeping their jobs by passing a foreign-oil tariff. I liked that one. You were in a khaki shirt, remember, with the sleeves rolled up? And your hair was blowing in the wind and you had a tan that looked like it could have come from being out there for thirty days at a stretch, even if it was really just from the beach at Cancun. I wondered why you made all those ads. You didn’t have a serious oppon
ent. So why go to the trouble? And I finally figured it was just because you were used to the cameras, used to being in the center of things, used to seeing your face on all the channels and in the papers.”

  His head was going slowly from side to side but he knew it was no good, he wasn’t going to convince me.

  “If I saw all the ads, and the pictures, so did Julia. And being a smart girl, with this turn for drama, she decided on an appropriate revenge.” I paused and took a deep breath, trying to keep my voice steady. “And what’s a good vengeance for somebody whose life is the way he looks on TV? Whose stock-in-trade is being photogenic?”

  I was dimly aware of Elias, standing in the doorway and I wondered how much he knew. But even as I glanced in his direction he turned and walked back out into the hall.

  “It wasn’t your wife that needed the plastic surgery, was it? It’s you.”

  There was a little gurgling sound in Benedict’s throat.

  “The congressman and his wife aren’t that close anymore, are they?” I asked. Benedict started to answer and then caught himself. “Where was she, sightseeing while the little fling was taking place? Stokley, you and Julia got cozy, is how I make it, and maybe she slipped something into your drink. And while you were asleep she did what she’d come to do.”

  Stokley had his hands up to the sides of his head now, as if to keep out the words.

  “When you woke up and found out what had happened, you sent Rivas after her. But he had to do something that would distract suspicion from you. What better way than to blow up a whole plane? Who’d have looked at Julia Morvant in particular?”

  I went over to the wall, where a picture of a Civil War general stared down and I thought idly that all the Stokleys had been photogenic.

  “I haven’t quite got the timetable down pat, I have to admit. How did you get Rivas there in such a hurry? And what did you and your people do? I’ll bet we could dig up some local doctor that treated you. Your wounds, after all, weren’t life threatening, just disfiguring. With painkillers, you could afford a few days before you got to a plastic surgeon. So you used the time to charter a special flight to U.S. territory, St. Croix, in the Virgins, and then you cooked up the bomb story. I don’t know where you got a hand grenade, but then you don’t need one to blow something up, do you? Just turn on the gas, let the house fill up and add a match. If an elite group from the Pentagon, headed by your Mr. Cox, suddenly showed up to investigate, the locals would be glad for the expert help. Or maybe you even called Cox and had his people arrange for the bombing. What really isn’t clear to me though is how you told Cox and his people about Rivas and what they thought of your allowing a plane to be blown up.”